Automation

Its time for me to discuss my pessimism for the future. In various threads, people respond to my pessimism with the classic "so what's your solution?". My answer is that there is no solution that preserves anything like a decent life for the vast majority of Americans. When I am called a "Debbie Downer" for this attitude, its very hard to resist shooting back with "Pollyanna". But I do resist that impulse.

All I'm asking of respondents to this essay is to engage with the pessimism, to follow the big picture logic.

As a techie, I have loosely followed the capabilities of self-driving cars. Decades ago, I did some work in computer vision; but, at that time, the computers simply did not have the horsepower to do realtime scene analysis. Boy have times changed:

Just saw a youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2ucpEeBfQg which offered 3 points. first, when the minimum wage was raised business for fast food joints skyrocketed. This was seen as an unabashed Good Thing. Working people had more money to spend and they spent it. But apparently they were spending it on fast food. Why? Were they buying a Big Mac on their way to their second job?

François Hollande's disastrous Presidency is nearing an end with his popularity running at around 4%, yes 4 %. Thankfully the voters in the PS [Parti Socialiste] rejected more of the same and thereby a complete election wipe out.

I supported and did some work for the campaign of Benoît Hamon, so why did I do so?

One of the hottest discussions we are seeing is the one surrounding the universal basic income (UBI) or citizens’ income (CI); in Britain it has been advocated by the Trade Union Unite (it was adopted at the last convention), it has been incorporated into the Green Party of England and Wales’s manifesto for a sustainable economy, the Labour Par

For the past year or so I've just been humoring everyone by looking for work. In fact, yesterday marks the only interview I've had in the last year and a half. Maybe 2 years. I put in all sorts of applications to many different places, especially over the last 6 months, and up until earlier this month, I didn't even get a single god damned call back.